


Starkweather: Inheritance (1 and 2 of ?)

by spookyawards_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-10-22
Updated: 2003-10-22
Packaged: 2019-04-27 07:03:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14420079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyawards_archivist/pseuds/spookyawards_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atSpooky Awards, and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address onSpookyAwards' collection profile.





	Starkweather: Inheritance (1 and 2 of ?)

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Spooky Awards](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Spooky_Awards), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [SpookyAwards' collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/spookyawards/profile).

 

Starkweather: Inheritance (1 and 2 of ?)

## Starkweather: Inheritance (1 and 2 of ?)

### by Spookykat

Title: Starkweather: Inheritance (1 and 2 of ?) Rating: R (language, content)  
Spoilers: Seasons 1-8 is fair game  
Subject: New Character, MSR, pre-s9 mytharc, Scully/Mulder/Doggett/Reyes/Other friendship, Doggett/Other Archived: <http://www.gossamer.org>, 2002 Spooky Awards, Ephemeral, and Stranger Than Fiction, The Official X-files Forum, XFMU, EXMC, and XFC. Any other archives, please ask. 

Feedback: Please feed the writers! Feedback us and we'll love you forever! 

Did I mention we love feedback? 

Alpha, Bravo and Echo, AKA Dr. Jerilyn Bailey Starkweather, CIA Special Agent Boneventure Merchant, Detective Edward Carillo, Mayor Charlie Swanson and CIA Agent Lux Carlos are the creation of Scully3776. 

Sharon Kuhn, Blade Connor, Davis Justin Leo, Phineas Adler, Judeth Fische, Bunny O'Dell, Lily Stratford, Joe Shepherd, Isobel Ibarra, Bellamy Wade, Manuel Ibarra, Rho, Melanie Doggett Davis, Eleanor Demere Doggett, Steven Lee Doggett, Laura Anne Strand, and Christina Renee Doggett Strand are all creations of Spookykat 

Everything else should belong to us if Chris Carter and his 1013 production team want to do their characters justice and get their heads outta their ass. Since his team and he came up with the idea in the first place then I guess they belong to him <heavy, regretful sigh> and the ever-tasteful FOX network. 

Authors' note: We took creative liberty and opted to squeeze an extra year in between season 8 and 9, but beyond that, all attempts are made to remain consistent with the continuity of the show. Scully3776 had a huge part in the plot-construction and basic outline, but Spookykat has written most of the story. 

**THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE...**

\--  
Prologue:  
\-- 

Where do we come from? 

That question is one every very young child asks. One day, not long from now, William Christopher S. Mulder will ask that question. Probably before he can pronounce his full name. 

What will his parents tell him? 

His mother would probably give the biological run-down of what happens when a child is conceived. His father would probably say something his mother would completely disagree with. 

I watched him come into this world. 

I watched as things...human, and yet very much unearthly...came in droves as if this cabin had something beaconing them to his birth place. 

As if a Star of David was lit over it. 

I heard his mother beg me to protect him from them. 

She doesn't know...his father doesn't know...his aunt doesn't know... 

Nobody can know... 

That I think I am that which she begged me to protect him from. 

Where do we come from is the first question we ask before we are taught that questions are not polite. 

Where are we going is the last question we ask when it is too late to care what is polite. 

It is our inheritance. 

* * *

Badlands National Park, Nevada  
1:03am, [insert day/time]

* * *

Sharon Kuhn seemed to be created for her job. She loved the outdoors, and after getting a Masters in Forestry, she found work in the Nevada Badlands. This being her first year as an intern, she was stuck on the graveyard shift. 

After quieting down a few campers who had drunk too much beer, her gray eyes panned as far as she could see of her territory. She drove her 4runner passed some campsites, wondering if any one of these strangers could be siblings, cousins, grandparents, or even parents. Being adopted, that thought was always in the back of her mind when she met someone new, or when she passed strangers on the street. 

And wouldn't it be cool if her dad was David Duchovny. No-no it wouldn't. That would be just plain gross! David Duchovny was hot! 

She never found out who her real parents were. When she was 17, searching for her vaccination papers for a trip she was planning to France, she found her birth certificate hidden in her Grandparents' secretary. 

Since that day, she had made efforts to find them only to come up empty. She hired private detectives, searched the Internet, coming up fruitless. And it would be no surprise to her if the sunrise didn't bring new information. 

Just to make one more round, she went off to the area of the park where folk-singers held concerts, protestors held rallies, and scientists dug up evidence, and there were cars upon cars. 

This was the dead of winter. Cars upon cars aren't here in this cold voluntarily. 

But for some reason, Sharon felt the urge to flow with the stream of traffic. The same impulse that drives you and me to sleep and eat compelled her to continue down to the valley with the traffic. 

She was puzzled but she wasn't nervous. Soon, she found out that she didn't have to press the gas pedal. She was sure that minutes...hours...must be passing, but if they were, her wristwatch and the clock on her dash weren't showing any sort of indication that any kind of time had passed. 

She untwisted her braid and let a cascade of chestnut brown hair fall down, and shrugged into her patrol jacket. It was getting pretty cold. Suddenly, not quite sure of how she got there, she climbed out of her car, and saw that she was in a valley full of people. 

Full of people whom she somehow felt a strong, inexplicable bond. Not all had her chestnut brown hair. Not all had gray eyes. But there was something else that was out of place...there was none of the usual raccoons, deer, other nocturnal animals around that should be there. Maybe it was the crowd. She felt a sense of belonging that had never been hers before. 

Then a man about her age, wearing a small silver Pentagram caught her eyes with a completely awed expression on his face. He wouldn't have been attractive except that the awed expression made his face absolutely glow. 

The wind picked up to hurricane force. The ground quaked, and a bright light passed over the valley. 

The crowd was gone. The valley was gone. 

Sharon Kuhn and the wearer of the Pentagram were no longer on this Earth. 

* * *

Meanwhile...  
Church Falls  
Reyes' Residence 

* * *

Monica Reyes was grateful to be climbing the stairs to her loft. As much as she loved her work, it hadn't afforded her much time, especially since her partners, Special Agents John Doggett and Dr. Jerilyn Starkweather had taken some time off after their previous case. She was glad John and Jerilyn got a break, as long as they didn't spend too much of the break together, of course. 

Not that she was jealous, and she knew neither of them would ever hurt her purposefully, but still, her coffee-brown eyes were seeing green. 

Just a little. 

She pushed those thoughts out of her head as she fished out her keys and unlocked the door. As she tried to open it she noticed something sliding across. 

With it being cold out, she still hadn't taken off her leather gloves, so with caution, she picked up the envelope. This was an unmarked vanilla envelope containing a map-a slip of paper with a number, a VHS tape, and another plain off-white business envelope inside with her name printed on it. The envelope was too heavy to contain just a piece of paper. 

Cautiously, she looked at the map. It was a map of the North American continent, and had a huge blue circle around New Mexico and Nevada. Along with that, it had a red dot in Arizona, and another red dot marked in Oregon, and green dots marking about a half a dozen sites...none of them near big cities. 

She opened the business envelope and in the same font the envelope was in, single spaced without paragraph breaks was a single page, and a .Zip file. 

"Agent Reyes 

There are those of us with extreme interest in keeping your division in the FBI open. However, there are others of us who are firmly opposed to it. Your partners are very close to too much truth. Many are willing to go to any extremes necessary to destroy the dynasty. 

And then there is me. 

I have no particular interest in whether or not the x-files division remains open. My only interest lies in the usefulness of the founder of your division. 

If you value your job, if you value your partnerships, if you value your life, please proceed on this investigation with extreme caution. For further information, I will contact you at a later time. 

Blade" 

She tried to push it out of her mind and keep the package on the back burner. 

She booted up her computer and waited for the .Zip to upload. It was a list of adoption agencies, a list of family lawyers, a list of recent abductees, and abductees who had been returned twenty years ago. 

Reyes discovered after a quick database research that a large percentage of the family lawyers had been associated with bribery and extortion, and charged with aiding black market adoptions. An alarming percentage of the agencies all had histories with these firms, and all of the recent abductees had been adopted from the black market with the help of these law firms. 

"Oh God-if one of these abductees from the 70s are my parents-" Reyes mumbled, "I'm next." 

Then, trying to make as much since out of the situation as she could before she called the cavalry, she cooked stir-fry from her freezer, heated water for a mug of warm tea, and popped the tape into her VCR. On her television was a disturbing scene, of parking lots filled with charred cars still containing drivers. 

And the next scene wasn't any less disturbing. It was in a desert area-someplace definitely in the Southwest from the landscape. The camera had zoomed in on a tent, and a blue dodge pick-up had pulled up to the tent. Reyes didn't pick up her fork as she saw a woman, pale and covered and blood, was brought to a common area. There, she saw a familiar face. A boy wearing glasses who looked about ten years old. 

This boy not even old enough to shave was being held by two men of great size and strength. They shouted in a language that Reyes couldn't decipher, which was apparently a command, for the boy held his hand over the woman's head and abdomen. 

It was as if he had erased the cause of all her symptoms. The blood, everything was gone, as if it had never existed. 

The same two men who had brought her in then had taken her back to the truck and stopped the truck at another large tent nearby. 

The tape ended. 

Feeling a twinge of guilt, Monica took a couple of quick bites of stir-fry and a long gulp of tea, and dialed the numbers of her partners. 

Starkweather came first. Doggett lived the closest, but he was still at the office when she called. The old apartment she shared with her late husband just held prisoner too many painful memories. She saw the TV all cued up for the VCR. 

"What? A movie with no popcorn?" Starkweather smirked. Reyes was in no mood to start a pissing contest, so she chose to ignore the comment. 

"Thanks for coming over at such a short notice. This is the stuff on the .zip file-" she said, plunking down a thick file of loose-leaf paper, "this is the note I got-" she was careful to pick it up with the tip of her pen so no prints would show. 

"What the hell is this? Some Tolkien wannabe? And who the hell signed it? I don't remember that name ever coming up in the x-files before." 

"That's what I can't figure out either." Reyes said shaking her head, "I guess I'll find out when they contact me again." 

"See what working with FBI broads do to ya, Papa John?" Starkweather teased as FBI Special Agent John Doggett graced the doorway. "Fashionably late is only for girls." 

"You better get away from us, John." Reyes picked up, "you'll be PMS'ing before you know it." 

"In New York-it was the other way around," Doggett grumbled. "Just don't make me watch any soap operas or talk orgasm secrets, and this will be a walk in the park." 

"Somebody dropped something off inside my door today, John." Reyes said, biting her lip. "I called my landlord, looked at the security surveillance camera and there's nobody coming here at all today. Jeri, show him the .zip stuff." 

"Hot off the presses." Starkweather said, gesturing to the pile of papers. 

"Then I got this video-tape." She turned it on. 

Starkweather and Doggett just stood at the static, unable to say anything for a while after it was over. 

Starkweather just kept looking down at the printed loose-leaves, up at the screen, down at the map, and back at Reyes. 

"I'd like to know how Gibson Praise got the magic touch." Starkweather finally managed to croak out. 

"Look, I know you guys have been through a lot lately," Reyes began, "and I really hate to put you under more stress, but I honestly have no idea what to make of this map. I have no clue what the letter means, either. The only thing I can figure so far is that the tape is connected with the map, and Gibson Praise is somehow connected to the abductions. 

"The map's obviously connected with the abductions." Starkweather began slowly. "The map's got something to do with abductees, and since two of these are known UFO hotbeds, it's a safe bet...I wonder if there's any way to find out if these abductees are taken at random or if there's a connection." 

"I can see what I can do about getting somebody to analyze the map." Reyes offered. 

"If this map is any indication...dollars for doughnuts, I can guarantee there's a connection." Doggett graveled. 

"It looks like a pattern." Reyes stated the obvious. "We just need to find out what kind of pattern this follows, and what it all has to do with Gibson Praise." 

"Then if we're going to stop the next abduction, it looks like the first thing we need to do is to find the common thread of the recent abductees." Starkweather offered. 

"Mon," Doggett started cautiously. "I know Mulder and Dana said that they couldn't come on cases anymore-but on this one, I think they need to know. They are both former abductees-" 

"Regardless," Reyes said, "we'll show this to Skinner first thing in the morning." 

"In our office." Doggett said bitterly. "We can't get him to be straight with us in his." 

"Then once we let Skinner in on this," Starkweather added, "Somebody will get the requisitions, somebody else follow up any leads we've got. I don't think we need to let Dana and Mulder know about this till we find any evidence that Will's in any danger." Doggett shook his head in protest. "I really don't wanna upset them needlessly. Besides, if Mulder finds out where we're going, he's gonna come along one way or another." 

"Jerilyn," Reyes began, "what do you remember about Gibson Praise?" 

"If the files are accurate, then he's a little boy who received his intelligence from-um-" then it hit her. Mulder had said the same thing to her when they first met. She barely whispered, "aliens." She paused thoughtfully, and then cleared her throat. He was last seen in the investigation into Mulder's death in what appeared to be Mulder's company." 

"That's one thing that bothered me about that investigation. Why wasn't he booked with kidnapping?" Reyes asked, taking another sip of her tea. 

"If I pressed charges against Mulder," Doggett said, rubbing his hands across his forehead, "then I'd have to drop my investigation into Kersh. I think a lot of people didn't want anyone looking into that little boy's disappearance. Too much would be at stake if he was found. I had to pick my own battles-and I just couldn't do that to Dana-" his voice trailed off. 

"John, Jeri-I need to let them know what's going on. If it was your kid in danger, wouldn't you wanna do anything in your power to protect them? Besides, they might give us leads on this case." 

"Low blow, Monica." Starkweather and Doggett echoed. 

"I'll call Dana first thing in the morning." Reyes offered. 

"And if I'm leaving for Oregon first thing," Doggett said as he stood up, "I better get goin'." 

"Yep-busy day for me too." Starkweather sighed. "I gotta come up with some way to keep my dumb-ass brother here. Skinner or the Gungeeks are gonna slip up and tell him for sure." She followed him out. 

"Jeri-I don't want you goin'." Doggett  
said in the elevator. 

"Doggett," Starkweather wouldn't even look at him. "You might as well stop plate tech tonics." 

"You're at RISK, Starkweather." He placed a hand protectively on her shoulder. "If you get on that plane with me tomorrow, you're putting yourself in danger, you're putting ME in danger. I'm sorry, but that's just plain dumb." 

"Jesus, Papa John," she whined, turning around to face him. "You're starting to sound like Ben-my dad-Mulder-everyone else who has made my life a living hell. Mulder's the only one of those living, what does THAT tell you" she added bitterly. Doggett took his hands in hers reassuringly, but said nothing, so she continued. "When you, me, everybody joined the FBI, we were damn well aware of the possibility of getting killed in the line of duty. This is not a f*cking suicide mission, Doggett. It's an investigation into missing people with links into the paranormal. Besides-" she added, pulling her hand away to fish her keys out of her purse, and then looked up at him with a sardonic grin, "I still owe Mulder hell for something, don't I?" 

"You know I trust you as an investigator." He nervously dug his hands into his pockets, as if to keep them under control. 

"Then prove it and let me come." 

"I don't know 'bout you, Doc, but after today, I could sure use a drink tonight. 

"Yeah, maybe we can put our heads together and figure out a way to keep my big dumb brother from crashing the party." 

"Or figure out a way for him to help us out." 

"Who are you and what did you do with John Doggett?" 

"Come on," he said, putting a companionable arm around her shoulder, "I know this little pub around the corner." 

Blade Connor sat silently in his car. His brown eyes surveyed the entire scene unfolding from his rear view mirror on the other side of the street with his camera ready. 

He knew that the pretty brunette FBI agent had gotten his package. He knew also that it had piqued her interest enough for her colleagues to be called to her apartment after hours. He hoped that she was smart enough to know how to handle the information, and quick enough not to get caught with it. 

The light almost undetectable click of the flash-less camera made the only sound in the car. He turned on his auditory equipment, crouched out of view, put on the headset, and waited for clues.   
  


#### If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Spookykat


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